Sea Grant Students: Helping Them Make a Difference

Part II

Video -Title: Laura Petes, 2003 research scholarship

Video: Petes in front of a blackboard, talking to interviewer

Audio - Laura Petes: I had a huge field experiment to start last summer, it was sort of the first experiment of my Ph.D. thesis, and the types of little things you need to buy are not covered by your advisors or whoever else is in charge of you as a student. And so Sea Grant offered a summer research fellowship for students who would be conducting research in Oregon in the marine systems – for supplies, travel, equipment, anything you could possibly need. That was just great!

Video: Closeup of starfish and mussels clinging to a coastal rock

Video: Petes setting up a cage

Audio - Laura Petes: So, I wanted to see how this gradient effected both mussels and sea stars – starfish – so I had cages set up with mussels and sea stars and I then collected tissue over the course of the summer to be able to do histology tissue processing, to look at the gonads to see how healthy their oocytes were, how healthy all their gametes were.

Video: Closeup of a sea star

Video: Petes interview continues

Audio - Laura Petes: There are a lot of opportunities for people who already have a Ph.D. or already have a master’s degree to obtain funding. But it’s pretty limited for graduate students – the number of organizations that provide funding for research.

Audio - Laura Petes: Good graduate students make good faculty in the future. Training in becoming a good research scientist is a critical part of the graduate experience, and that’s obviously not possible without funding.

Video - Title: Lisa Krentz,

Video: Lisa Krentz on camera.

Audio - Lisa Krentz: There’s so much work going on; great work that’s going on that’s done by students. Students just often don’t have the resources to support themselves through school. ……

Audio - Lisa Krentz: I was seriously looking into having to take a hiatus from school just so I could work for a little while to earn enough money to then be able to go back, which is not something you want to do when you’re in the middle of a project. It’s the first thing on your mind. You know your data well, you’re ready to write and that’s not the time you want to leave it.

Video: Krentz hauling in a net.

Audio - Lisa Krentz: Certainly, I could not have done it without the help of Sea Grant’s fellowship. It was, for me, a very large chunk of money that really helped me at a point where I was thinking, O.K., what am I gonna do now? I’ve got the rest of this to finish, but I’ve got no money to live on. [Chuckles.]

Video: Krentz leaning over a boat with a fish in her hands.

Audio - Lisa Krentz: In graduate school, sometimes you come up with projects and you don’t know if it’s gonna work. And, this one worked for me beyond my wildest dreams. I’ve got some really great data. So I think that it’s gonna have some implications management-wise for what policy makers do with this species, so it’s turned out really great.

Video: credits, Oregon Sea Grant logo, Oregon State University logo.

[End of video]